General Conference!

So conference was great! The letters are getting shorter, so the only thing I can really think of is general conference. I drove down for priesthood session but ended up missing half of Saturday afternoon, because of a bad signal, so I need to catch up on that. But other than that, I got to see it all and loved it! On Saturday, I sat with the "trunky group," a bunch of missionaries that are going home in the next couple months. The part about hero's from President Eyring made me tear up…which is impressive since he didn't even cry, and he always seems to cry when he speaks. It made me reflect on my mission, my companions and President Hiers in particular, and what I have learned from him the past two years. It was a very trunky night. Elder Plowman ran into his brother and dad, so that was pretty weird.

I don't have my notes right with me, but one of the things that most stood out to me were not slowing down once I get home. I decided I couldn't ignore it. One of the questions I needed answered was what to do to keep my "spiritual high" when I get home; there were several talks that answered that by just saying to keep going. Obviously, I plan on relaxing a little at home, but I don't really want to slow down at all as far as work ethic or studying or anything like that. I feel like I worked too hard to learn how to do those things just to throw it away or kick back as soon as I take my badge off. I know that's probably an obvious thing, but it meant more coming from the Spirit. I also learned I need to decide on the people I am going to serve once I get home, particularly my brothers. I am not exactly sure what I can do, but that will be a big focus of mine this summer since I will be around them a lot. Now that I think about it, will Amanda be home all summer, too? That's it for trunky revelation.

As far as missionary work, I learned a lot about boldness. It's so hard to find the line between Alma (oh ye wicked and perverse generation) and being too easy on people. I know we can't burn bridges, and at the same time, I am not a prophet and can't condemn people's souls just because they won't accept my message, so that's always been a tough thing to find is how bold should we really be without getting too judgmental or contentious. Elder Larsen and I have thought a  lot about that and tried to find more of a balance. The issue is that so many people believe that all churches are true, because they all believe in God and the differing opinions don't matter. I can't comprehend or follow that logic at all, but it's hard to try and explain how there can only be one true church without insulting them and what they have grown up believing. Anyway, that is just what I have been thinking about lately; it's not necessarily the revelation I received.

I learned a lot about love and dedication for the people that we serve. I get the feeling that a big trial is coming for the church, or maybe it's already here. It's a tough world to live and do what Jesus Christ expects, but the farther the world gets away, the more rewarding it feels to do what's right. It makes me want to help youth or my younger siblings to figure out how important those years are. I am in the same spot, and I also learned and realized how much I need to be more focused and give 100% to what I am doing. I can't remember which talk made me realize that, but whether I am studying, working, tracting, planning I need to be more focused in on that exact thing. My brain tries to run through too many things at once. One of the talks said if you chase two rabbits you won't catch either of them. That is certainly true for me, so the past few days I have been trying to do better at that.

I love learning about gratitude since it is something I need so much more of, so I loved that talk and realized I need to be grateful for my mission rather than whining and complaining that it's over, and I have to go to school. I don't know how many times in life I will have to learn that lesson before it sticks, but hopefully, I'll get there.

Working in my area has been good. We have had a very slow past couple days, but that happens occasionally, and it's nothing to get worked up about. I think probably 20 appointments have fallen through in the past week, and 15 of those were in the past three days. A couple of the new people we had found have all dropped, so we are back to a small teaching pool and desperately need to find more investigators. I really don't want to leave Elder Larsen with not a lot of work.

We are still dealing with this nightmare problem about where the border of our ward is and which missionaries should be teaching a certain investigating family. Half the leaders say they should be in one ward, and the other half say in another (our leaders, branch pres./stake pres. say they belong to our ward and vice-versa). So I ended up calling our mission presidency to talk to them, and they said they would talk to the area seventy, so that everyone was clear on where the border is. Then a stake president called yesterday and yelled at me, because I called our mission presidency who he said has no stewardship over boundaries and all this stuff about how I should have called him instead (which we did and left a message, but he didn't call back until ten days later after we had already gone elsewhere for help.). So that's what I get for praying for charity this transfer. I don't think it will get figured out until after I leave. Either way, this whole family wants to get baptized, and at this point, doesn't want to go to the other ward and now that it looks like they will have to. They are trying to look for a house in our area to buy, so they don't have to switch wards. It is a nightmare to say the least, and we are right in the middle of it since when we got into the area; they had already been attending Buena Vista for quite some time.

I did another exchange this week with a new missionary and got to help him work on Spanish and things like that. I haven't been with a brand new missionary in a while, so that was fun. I will go back to Monte Vista for exchanges this week. They really need help, so I am going to go again to see what I can do to help. Elder Larsen and I still get along very well. Elder Salazar plays racquetball half the mornings for exercise which I am really bad at, but it is fun since we are both equally bad until Elder Plowman comes in and beats us both 15-0 every time.

I think that is all for now love you all!

Elder Bassett